Google

Working at Google is extremely chill. The work/life balance is great (although beware meetings with other timezones), and there is a lot of flexibility.

The expectations are almost nil. It's impossible to get fired unless you completely stop showing up.

The benefits and pay are good (not the best in the industry, but better than most).

Some of the older technology was (and sometimes still is) genuinely groundbreaking. You can learn a lot by studying it. If you're an engineer, find someone senior who has been there for 10+ years to learn from. Most of those people are extremely impressive if they haven't left yet.

Most of the senior leadership changed from 2015 to about 2018. The new people are the most "meh," uninspiring bunch of caretakers I've ever seen. Above director level, leadership seems to only care about PR and cutting costs. Nobody has any kind of product vision or the guts to try anything new. Any innovative product someone manages to produce gets killed immediately. Any new acquisitions get bogged down in senseless bureaucracy.

The old leadership leaving triggered a chain reaction that's still ongoing and has now reached tech lead and line manager levels. Most of the best people left or mostly checked out.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a simple 9-5 job, but Google today is something else. It's soul-crushing how much nobody cares anymore and how disincentivized you are from actually trying to ship a product for end-users. If you actually try to get anything done, you will be the only one, and it'll suck life out of you.

On paper, this might sound like a nice, chill gig, but human beings are not meant to do nothing. The complete lack of goals or vision in the company will start getting to you sooner or later, and it is depressing.

Consider: this is a well-funded business with lots of infrastructure and resources, and the leadership chooses to do absolutely nothing with them.

Honestly, there's no point. They've shown over the past five years how little they care what anyone at the company thinks.

If you want to bring this company back from the dead, change the CEO to someone who actually cares.